


Beyond

by Mariechaan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Accidental Death, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cussing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, JeanMarco Gift Exchange 2017, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Sasha Blouse/Connie Springer, Not Beta Read, Out of Character, Time Skips, blind!Jean, ghost!Marco, idk anything about being blind im sorry, sligth marco/thomas just a heads up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 19:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13083822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariechaan/pseuds/Mariechaan
Summary: When Jean, his father and his dog found themselves lost after the only person that truly accepted them left them suddenly, the only way for them to move on is to move out. As things start to change for the better, something begins to happen in their house, he keeps stumbling against things and not because he's blind but because someone is moving them, and with his father working and Jean doing nothing all day, it's clear someone else has been roaming the halls of their house.





	Beyond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadow_wyvern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wyvern/gifts).



> oohh boy, this was so damn hard to write! 
> 
> hey hey [shadow_wyvern](https://shadow-wyvern.tumblr.com/) i really really really hope you like it.... this is my first time writing for a gift exchange and i was ugly crying because i thought i wasn't going to make it but i damn did! so anyway please enojoy

I. Gone

They were sitting by her bedside, Titan, Jean's guide dog by his feet. He had been crying until he felt raw and wrong, his father, next to him, was no better. He couldn’t see him, but he was sure they probably looked the same. His mother’s cold, lifeless hand was still gripped in between his, it’d been about 10 minutes since the monitors attached to her were disconnected, but none of them could let go just yet.

After years of fighting an already lost battle, she was finally getting the peace she deserved, but in the process, left the rest of her family behind. He was glad that the thread of life she was holding on to snapped, but he also couldn’t accept it.

Like to most kids, his mother was an anchor that kept him at bay when he was drifting away from the right path, she made him see the good in him, made him believe that he was perfect the way he was, that because he was _slightly_ different, it didn’t mean he had to put up with standards society had for him.

When she died, a part of him died with her, a part of his father too. Jean lived for the feelings of things, for what he could touch, and taste, what he could hear and smell, colors meant absolutely nothing to him, but he swears when his mother left, the world got darker… or maybe he could feel how cold life was around him.

As time went by and days turned into months, their life hadn’t change since the first day when they went back home without her. His father tiptoed around him, literally. He could hear him, in front of his door, maybe about to knock to talk to him, maybe to see the shadows his body casted, maybe to know he was alive, whatever it was, he never dared to go in, to take the final step to reconnect with his son.

It wasn’t until a year or so later that they decided to move… move on and move out, decided to let themselves be in peace, his mother did nothing for them but love them with all her being, but everyday they spent in the house where she lived, made them resent her and themselves for letting it get to them. One of his mother’s dying wishes was for them to be happy and move on, but only waking up without her was a drag, there were days where none of them could even get up from bed, to fucked up to live their lives, too damaged to survive, and that’s how they found themselves unpacking their stuff in a new house at the outskirts of Trost, in a little town called Jinae.

 _New house_  being a way of speaking because the house had been there for ages, passing from one generation to the other until the last couldn’t pay for it anymore and the bank go it. It was a surprise it was still standing, his father described it as a train wreck and Jean had never seen one, but he figured it was pretty bad. At one point even, Titan refused to go in and Jean couldn’t blame him, as soon as he stepped inside he felt a whole-body shiver that got all his hair up in warning.

He had been born blind and besides all that it entailed, the sharpening of his other senses was a welcomed kind of side effect. That’s how he felt a presence to his side and just when he was about to ask who was there, his father interrupted him with a “excuse me”, and what felt like the corner of a box hitting his lower back.

His father had hired movers to help them as Jean couldn’t do anything but stay out of their way and explore the house with Titan to get him to know his surroundings better, he couldn't help but feel useless with every step he took and when his father called him after everything was finally done, they sat on the floor of the living room, their backs against the couch. None of them said anything, too tired to talk, his father had been moving and unpacking all day, while Jean was full of bruises from banging into things during his exploration, he had tried to feel everything his hands could touch instead of following Titan through the rooms full of boxes and furniture.

II. Who’s there?

They settled easily into a routine, wake up, have breakfast, do nothing, have lunch, do nothing, have dinner, do nothing and go to sleep, that’s how it was until Jean’s father got a job. They didn’t need the money… at all, but Jean knew the reason he did it, he heard his father talk to his uncle once, telling him he didn’t know what to do, the thoughts of his late wife coming back to him. Jean was the one with the idea of him getting a job.

He never told his father he heard him talking and his father never thanked him for the idea. Jean guessed that was one of those situations where you just pretended like it wasn’t a big deal, even though it was… it wasn’t until years later, on his deathbed when his father confessed that his son had saved him from following his mother prematurely. But still, none of them said what really happened.

He continued with his routine by himself, not even with Titan. As soon a he got a hang of the house, Titan quickly became a pet instead of an aide. Every once in a while, when he needed to buy something, he’d go out with him and do it, but most of the times he just stayed home and called his dad to get whatever he needed. After living in the city for over 20 years, he was finally enjoying a peaceful life and Jean figured Titan felt the same way.

This peaceful life, though, was even more boring than when he lived in the city but so was life in the country side, mostly to people who were not used to it, like himself. Days passed by and he didn’t even know what date it was, the only difference was the weekend, when his father was home and at least he had someone else to do nothing with.

And, it was one of those peaceful boring days when _it_ started. First it was an object out of place, only noticeable to Jean when he stumbled upon it… a chair, a coffee table, a fan, then it was different things, the freezer open, the drawers out, his clothes out of place or on the floor, these were the stuff he could hit himself on, but wondered what other objects were around that he couldn’t see. His father never said anything but they still didn’t talk like before so that might be the reason.

What changed everything was a humid, hot, night when he felt… something. It had been about four months or so since they moved, and he had forgotten where, how or when he’d felt that… something.

The temperature dropped a degree or ten and he felt the need to hide under his blanket like a child scared of the big coat in his open wardrobe, but he didn’t even know where the wardrobe was, so he didn’t hide.

“Who’s there?” he asked softly, not wanting to alert his father but when he talked, Titan jumped to his bed. For a moment he thought his dog just wanted to sleep with him but then he felt Titan’s tail on his cheek and he realized he was shielding him. “Who’s there?” he said a little louder, braving himself up for Titan.

“Why do you keep stumbling with the stuff I move?” Someone said, and Jean felt his dinner make its way up his throat. The voice sounded kind and soothing, but hearing it in the middle of the night, at 3:34 a.m. —because yes, as soon as the voice talked, Jean hit his bedside clock as hard as he could to know the time—, did nothing like soothe him, instead it scared him so bad, his knee jerk reaction was to know the time.

“Jean,” his father burst through the door, screaming his name. The temperature went back to its normal hot degree and the presence disappeared immediately. Titan got off the bed and walked calmly to the door, his nails hitting the wooded floor. “What happened?”

“Dad,” Jean said, not being able to formulate another word. That night his father, his dog and him slept in the same bed, he couldn’t stop trembling and the rest of the week went in the same fashion… he was too scared to go to his room.

The next week he finally gathered enough courage to go back, he hit the clock about every other hour without planning it or thinking about it and by the time he finally managed to go to sleep, it was already past 5 a.m.

The next day was the same and the next one and the next one. On Friday night when his father asked him if he wanted to sleep in his room, Jean said no and immediately felt a tingling sensation on the nape, a sort of sixth sense telling him to accept but he still refused his dad’s offer.

When his clock said it was 3:48 a.m. for the third time in a row, the temperature dropped and without missing a beat, Jean talked.

“Who's there?”

“Why do you keep stumbling with the stuff I move?” the voice asked, genuine curiosity instead of mock.

“Why do you move them?” Jean asked, and Titan climbed up the bed.

“That’s what I do,” the voice said.

“Why?” Jean asked again.

“Why do you keep stumbling?”

“I can’t see them…”

The voice laughed, and the presence disappeared again.

After that, _it_ came every night. Regardless of the time but always before sunrise and after sundown. Jean had tried to ask it more things, but out of sheer embarrassment refused to give an answer to the voice’s only question. With Titan in his room, he thought it was more than obvious that he was blind but there he was talking to what he might as well call a ghost, so maybe it wasn’t that obvious, after all, Titan didn’t wear his harness when he was home with Jean.

When they hit the month mark of Jean trying so ask more question and the voice asking the same one, he decided to try a different approach.

“Dad?” Jean called his father on his way to the kitchen… it smelled like eggs, bacon and coffee. His father hummed to let him know he was listening. “I think there’s a ghost here…” what he heard next was his father choking on his coffee and then a sort of gibberish that made Jean think he probably spilled everything on his uniform and that the coffee was a little bit more than just… warm.

That day his father called in sick to work and they ended up sitting in his studio, researching about ghosts, murders the supernatural and dead people who lived in the house. They found a bunch of information… but not knowing what the ghost looked like made it hard. At the end, they did get a clue. The house belonged to the Bodt family, passed from one son to the other, the last generation lost everything after they spent all their money trying to find their son, who got lost when he was only 17 years old, left for school one morning and never came back. His parents died before they could find him. The police never closed the investigation, so at the end, when his parents died, they buried an empty casket next to the family’s tombs. His name was Marco Bodt.

That night Jean mentally prepared himself to face the voice but thinking about it all day and part of the night, had him falling asleep before he could talk to it. He woke up groggy from sleeping to much as he hadn’t done it in a while.

Next morning, while having his breakfast, Titan started barking and Jean felt someone blow ice cold air into his ear.

“Fuck,” he screamed falling from the stool he was sitting on in the kitchen island. “What the fuck, what the _fuck_?”

“You hit your knee with the chair in the dining room,” the voice said.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“I want to know why you stumble with the stuff I move.”

“I’m fucking blind, can’t you see?” he finally gave in, pushing his plate with the rest of the omelet so hard it fell to the floor and broke.

“Where’s your cane?” the voiced asked.

“I don’t fucking need one,” he had one, barely used it, he couldn’t even remember where it was, “I have a fucking dog and I know my way around here… though it'd be better if you stopped moving the fucking furniture.” He yelled to no one and nowhere in particular.

“I’m sorry,” the voice apologized, and it was so real and honest that Jean cringed in mortification.

“Are you Marco?” he offered instead.

“How did you know?” Marco replied amazed.

“Researched, you died ages ago, why are you here?

“I don’t know where else to go.”

“Okay,” Jean said. Not knowing what else to do.

“Okay,” Marco replied.

III. Bored

“Jean?”

“Hm?”

“Jean?” Marco called again

“What?”

“Jean?”

“What is it, Marco?” He finally said lifting his upper body from the bed and supporting his weight with his arms.

“I’m bored.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I’m dead, Jean.”

“Well I’m not,” he finished and went back to sleep. Patting his bed twice to let Titan know it was okay for him to climb up.

Since the first day they talked, after Marco apologized and Jean decided to be less of a douche, they had been… communicating. More often than not, that meant Marco making fun of Jean and listing all the things he stumbled with during the day and while that would make any blind person mad, Jean was just happy to have someone else to talk to, besides Titan.

He had tried to tell his father about Marco, that he found the lost and last Bodt child, but it really wasn’t something relevant, and while he knew his father would never judge him about having imaginary friends or... ghost friends, he stayed quiet. Maybe he was afraid that if someone else found out, Marco might disappear forever, which was unlikely because of how long he’d been there, but alas. That was also the reason why he restrained himself from making one too many questions, scared that Marco might get mad and _go._

“Marco,” he called after a while pretending to be asleep.

“Jean,” Marco mirrored.

“Do you miss being alive?”

Marco didn’t say anything, and Jean didn’t pressure him. He could still feel him and that was enough.

“Do you like being alive?” Marco asked instead, but he didn’t wait for Jean’s answer, opting for disappearing again.

Every night he tried to ask him something new, who he was while alive, about his parents, his death… and a handful other questions. Sometimes Marco would tell him he was happy, or more like not here and not there, in between. Sometimes he did bad, sometimes he did good. He had a lot of friends, he still remembered some of their names, Bert, Annie, Reiner, Mikasa, Thomas, Mina and the list went on. It was amazing to him because Jean only had Connie and Sasha, but the biggest difference was that Marco made his friends because he could while Jean had his because Sasha attended the same _specialized_ school, for “people like them”, since she was mute, and Connie was her boyfriend, so being friends with one, meant being friends with the other.

What caught his attention the most about the topic, was the way Marco said their names, it had this sadness touch that made Jean’s heart clench in pain for no reason.

In exchange for all these questions, Marco asked him the same, at times he pretended he didn’t hear Marco or that he was already asleep because talking about his life made him remember his mother, and remembering his mother involved tears, tiredness and memories of a life he didn’t have anymore.

“Marco?” he tried again, even though he didn’t feel him near anymore. Of course, Marco never answered, so instead of trying again, he patted around the bed searching for Titan, when he found his dog, he touched his fur softly until sleep overcame him.

IV. Out

“Jean,” Marco screamed near his ear where Jean was reading, his hands jumped from the book and hit the air, Titan barked excitedly until they both heard Marco laughing.

“Stop doing that,” he said crouching, trying to find the book.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Marco asked, still laughing but less hysterically.

Jean stayed quiet thinking what to say to Marco. That question always made him sweat so bad, he tried to avoid it as much as he could, that was why he never went to family gatherings. Just the thought of his uncles and aunts _getting to know him better_ had him shying away from the whole world. He didn’t dare to talk about it to his parents either but… Marco was kind enough to answer most of his questions, so he gathered enough courage to find an answer. He only came up with a “why,” though.

“I never had a girlfriend,” Marco said, “So I was wondering if you had one. I mean you’re yknow handsome and all, so….” Marco trailed off.

“I am?” Jean asked flabbergasted. The only people to ever tell him that were his mother and Sasha, but who even believes their friends and mother when they say that.

“Oh…” Marco’s presence faded a little, “right…”

“So, you died a virgin?” Jean changed the topic quickly, throwing a mocking tone that made Marco’s presence feel a little warmer.

“I didn’t say that… besides, what makes you think I didn’t have, I don’t know, a boyfriend instead?”

His presence faded again, and Jean was starting to think that was his way of blushing.

“Did you?” He asked feeling his cheeks getting warmer.

“No,” Marco said simply and left.

That got Jean thinking and with one thought drifting to another, he decided to do something he meant to do when he was a teen but didn’t because he wasn’t really sure, he was sure, he just hadn’t come to terms with it enough to do it. He thought about it so much that when his father came back home, he realized he hadn’t moved for hours.

“Dad?” he called from the living room. His father sat next to him on the couch and Jean let go of the book he was holding.

“Would you like me to get married?” he asked… it wasn’t really what he was planning on but, who cares.

“Jean…?”

“I think I like women,” he said and paused, “but not as much as I like men.”

He heard his father take a deep breath at the same time he felt Marco’s presence appear and get warm like earlier.

“Jean,” his father repeated as the couch shifted and he felt his father’s arms around him. “Thank you for telling me,” he said and kissed the top of his head.

Marco giggled near his father’s ear and Jean couldn’t help but laugh too, he didn't know why, though.

“What was that?” His father yelped.

V. Away

That night, as soon as his body touched the pillow, Marco appeared.

“Do you wanna know how you look?” he asked and for the first time since he talked to Marco, he felt his bed take a different shape under his presence, like he was sitting at the edge of it, really close to Jean. When he didn’t say anything, Marco continued, “the roots of your hair are the color of the dirt, but the rest of it is like the sun, your eyes, though, are the ones with the warm feeling, I’ve seen them by mere chance, when you’re not closing them or hiding them behind sunglasses, it’s a shame you do, I really like them. Your body is long and sinew, but not in an exaggerate way, just the right amount, your limbs have this perfect balance with your torso, not too long and not too short. Your l—”

“Marco,” Jean said interrupting him, he didn’t know what color the dirt was or the sun, like he knew just that he’d never seen them, but what Marco said was enough to had not only his cheeks warming up but his chest and all the way to his ears, too. Marco didn’t answer, just disappeared, again.

After that, he didn’t feel Marco in over a week, which left him thinking what it all meant. What the warm fuzzy feeling in his chest meant, by that time, Marco had become a constant in his life, and it had been a rather long while since the last time he talked to someone, it wasn’t like he couldn’t text Sasha to talk… he avoided texting as much as he avoided the rest of his family. Going out was also out of the question, he figured Titan might need the exercise as he was becoming more a pet with every passing day but, he just didn’t feel like doing anything at all and that was that.

Sometimes he found himself calling Marco softly, enough to not wake Titan up, but Marco stayed quiet. Jean wondered where he usually went when he disappeared like that.

VI. Truth

“Remember the time you asked me if I missed being alive?” Marco whispered into Jean’s ear and, like the first time, Jean’s knee jerk reaction was to throw his arm in the air to check the time, _5:47 A.M._ his clock said robotically, waking Titan up too. “I like being dead, it’s no different than being alive.”

“Marco?” Jean replied. After a week of not saying anything, this wasn’t what he expected. He liked to think he knew Marco at least a little bit but he knew that was wrong.

“My friends, Bert, Reiner and Annie… remember them?” Jean felt his bed sink under Marco’s weight, again “they found me kissing Thomas, at that time they didn’t say anything, not even to me—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Marco,” Jean tried but Marco continued, getting a little warmer.

“The day I disappeared, after school… they took me to this abandoned well in the middle of a field, we often went there to joke around and… uhm… smoke and drink, but that day I noticed something different. They were talking among themselves and looking at me… different, I don’t know how to explain it—” his presence flickered like a lighter about to run out, Jean could feel him getting hot and cold and disappearing and reappearing again. “—the well had these planks over it because a child had drowned there years before… we got drunk and high and what little I remember is them confronting me about the Thomas thing.

“I tried to deny everything because… I didn’t know what else to do, I ended up telling them that Thomas forced me but of course they knew the truth, they had seen everything, they were just playing with me…” Suddenly the temperature dropped again, not like every time Marco appeared, but it was cold enough for Jean to feel his body shiver.

“They cornered me, and I saw Bert and Reiner move the planks, I think they were just trying to scare me, but they were too gone to realize what they were doing… I had sobered up enough to tell them to stop, but not enough to run. I was sweating cold and my muscles ached like I had run to Trost and back, and… they took stuff too far, making me walk back towards the well... I accidentally stumbled with the edge, and—"

“Marco… fuck,” Jean practically begged, realization dawning on him. There was no way in hell he could feel what Marco felt that time, the thought of the people you considered your friends, betraying you to the point of committing the worst crime ever… Jean wasn’t in any way religious, but he understood that that was one of the rules you had to stick to according to every fucking religion, it was bad from a stranger on the streets trying to steal your shit, but your best friends, the people you trusted with such a burning passion, you’d give your life for them… he couldn’t even fathom the feeling, couldn’t put it into words, he was just… speechless.

“I think you’d laugh if you could see your face, right now,” Marco said humorless.

“I’m so sorry, f-fuck,” he stuttered, feeling the tears dripping down his closed eyes, “I’m so, so sorry Marco…”

“You’re the first person I talk to since I died, I don’t know how long it’s been but… it was worth the wait.” Marco said, fading a little.

“Get closer,” Jean replied, trying to feel him better, Marco complied, the bed creaking softly while Titan banged his tail on the floor.

He stretched his arms until he touched something cold, Marco gripped his hands and Jean winced a little, his sweat doing nothing to ease the sensation.

“Was that your last kiss? With Thomas?” Jean asked sheepishly, trying to change the topic to something more light and happy.

“Yeah, we just found each other by luck but there was never a real chance, it was just curiosity because we didn’t know anyone else who liked the same, uhm… stuff,” Marco gripped harder, pushing Jean’s hands closer to his body as he kept inching towards him.

“How come,” Jean asked again, opening his eyes, remembering how Marco had said he liked them.

“He’s not my type,” Marco replied breathing in and breathing out, like he needed the air to live, Jean felt the cold breeze hit his nose and it was just, so surreal that he couldn’t help but keep playing his part.

“What’s your type,” he asked out of breath and panting slightly, his hands still gripped in between Marco’s, who was getting warmer and slightly fading by the second and Jean had never felt this good.

“Brooding and blind with a dirty mouth…” Marco said and kissed him.

He felt a shiver going down his back, every hair on his body stood electrified, time stopped, and everything disappeared, he closed his eyes again but not because he was used to but because he was in a trance-like dream. He had kissed girls before, blind, deaf, mute, girls with all kinds of disabilities, and just one or two boys, but none of them felt like this, none of them made him feel perfect and whole, none of them had his body feeling warm at the same time he was trembling in joy and cold… and then he stopped.

“Marco,” Jean said.

“Jean,” Marco replied and disappeared.

“Marco,” he called, the trembling subsiding but not the cold sensation, he knew it was no use to get out of the bed and look for him, so he didn’t even try.

VII. The end

The next day, he was listening to music on the floor of the living room when he felt Marco to his right, where the coffee table was supposed to be.

“Why did you tell me all that?” He asked without lowering the volume of the music.

“You came out to your father,” Marco avoided the question.

“My mom had a rule of never hiding stuff to family, to them… I just did what she taught me to do.”

“Why did you wait this long?”

“I never thought it was relevant enough to say it, but now that mom is gone and you’re here, I feel like I could be gone anytime, and no one would know, so…”

“I don’t know what happened to Thomas,” Marco disappeared and reappeared to Jean’s left. “I don’t know what happened to my parents, if they found my body or found Bert, Annie and Reiner guilty. I don’t know anything, and I don’t really care either, but watching you come out to your father so boldly made me feel brave enough to tell you my story.”

 _Makes sense._ Jean took a deep breath, trying to solve the puzzle that was Marco Bodt, the kind soothing soul who found his end at the hands of the people he considered his best friends and still, from beyond, kept everything light hearted enough to make it seem like it was nothing.

Marco Bodt with a laugh that made Titan jump and bang his tail in joy.

Marco Bodt who offered kisses that felt like being at the edge of the tallest mountain, ready to jump.

Marco Bodt, who compared Jean’s blind eyes with the same warm he felt from the sun when he was alive.

Marco Bodt, next to him spilling his guts.

“Marco Bodt,” Jean whispered, “do you like me?”

Marco huffed softly and before Jean could stretch his arms to touch him, he faded a little and reached his hands to meet Jean halfway.

And here Jean was, his lips inches away from the puzzle that was Marco Bodt, who finally found a somewhat good ending next to the blind guy from the city, with a dog named Titan that was supposed to be a guide dog, a father who worked because the thoughts of the love of his life came back to kick him when he was down and with eyes like the sun that Marco Bodt barely saw but still knowing that they were there, made him feel more alive than ever.

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry if this isnt exactly what you wanted sñedklewlksdwemd halfway it i sorta let my imagination run wild and ended up with this almost 5k monstrosity, you really made me write way out of my comfort zone and i fucKING LOVED IT. Thhank you so so much for giving me amazing prompts to work with and if you ever feel like screaming about JM, you can always find me [here](http://maddesea.tumblr.com/)


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